RE: Linkbases, Topic Maps,and RDF Knowledge Bases -- help me understand, please

[Didier PH Martin <martind@netfolder.com>]

Hi Eve,

Ev
Even though XLink and RDF are targeted at different purposes, it's still a
fair observation that XLink has a lot (not all) of the power of RDF.  For
info on a suggested way to map XLink to RDF, see the note "Harvesting RDF
Statements from XLinks":

   http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink2rdf/

Didier replies:
In fact, with a little will, both could be merged. For instance. an RDF
expression refer to a particular resource by

<rdf:description about="http://www.talvastudio.com">

and includes a list of properties.

What about the following thing:

<mylink xlink:type="extended" etc...>
<myresource xlink:type="locator" xlink:href=""http://www.talvastudio.com">
.... a list of property elements about this resource ....
</myresource>
</mylink>

You would have then a semantic link. A link that includes some meta
information about a resource. You kill two birds at the same time. The link
could be interpreted by a plain xlink engine. Or this could also be
intrepreted a collection of resources each resource having some meta
information. A merge of Topic maps concepts and RDF concept. The solution is
not too far. The only problem though is will and politics :-)

cheers
Didier PH Martin